6 LESSONS ZOMBIES TAUGHT ME

1. Zombies and journalists have a lot in common.

Their personal hygiene is suspect. Their fashion sense is non-existent. They have trouble finding work. And while they’ve appeared in countless movies and TV shows, no one invites them to dinner or wants to have sex with them.

But one week ago today in New Orleans, journalists and zombies had something positive in common: They worked together to train college students how to interview better. It was called Zombie Stories.

But we had a problem…

2. The undead are unavailable.

Zombies may be everywhere these days, but never when you really need them.

I sought 30 zombies to teach interviewing tactics to 70 college students – because if you can interview a zombie, you can interview anyone. The concept was simple…

We discovered our zombies in (where else?) New Orleans. The Krewe of the Living Dead Social Aid and Pleasure Club is a loose collection of alcohol and latex enthusiasts who pub-crawl through the city until they’re no longer pretending to be zombies. Their shuffling, stumbling, and mumbling becomes real.

But we had a problem…

3. Zombies aren’t punctual.

This might seem obvious in retrospect. But we figured zombies would show up on the Saturday night before Halloween – do children oversleep on Christmas morning?

Instead, we had a measly dozen zombies ready by our start time, resulting in a 15-minute delay. Thankfully, zombies kept arriving throughout our event: a corpulent zombie monk in flowing black robes, a lithe zombie bride in a blood-splattered wedding dress, and a disturbing zombie mom carrying a bloody baby doll.

We had 20 zombies by the end, with a half-dozen more showing up when we were packing up.

(“Dude, it’s over?” one of the stragglers asked me. The most disconcerting part of the entire evening was hearing a bloody zombie address me as, “Dude.”)

Even the zombie tardiness would’ve been OK. But we had a problem…

4. Zombies are way too nice.

We decided to recruit New Orleans zombies instead of corpsifying journalists because we wanted students to interview real people. (Yes, in my mind, zombies are more real than journalists.)

But just to cover our ass, we had four journalists made up as zombies, including Dave Cuillier, president of the Society of Professional Journalists. SPJ paid for the evening.

Turns out, Cuillier was a better interviewee than any of the “real” zombies. Example…

Q. Have you turned any celebrities?A.I’ve turned many celebrities. Matt Damon, for one – from his acting, he’s clearly a zombie.

We didn’t expect the zombies to be effusive or articulate, but the ones who were still sober at 7 p.m. should’ve at least been as creative in their retorts as they were with their outfits.

And they were entirely too nice. The zombie bride (above) didn’t smear anyone with fake blood until I reminded her that we spent all morning mixing gallons of the damn stuff and pouring it into water bottles for them. (Like everything else in the world today, this recipe called for lots of corn syrup.)

The reason for the bloody bride’s reserve? “Oh, but these kids are just sooo cute.” I was about to kill her all over again.

Most of the female students gravitated toward a handsome man named “Amen.” (The zombies all wore name tags, of course.) He wasn’t actually a zombie, though. His backstory was simple: He survived the zombie apocalypse but lost an eye in the fight. He was chatty but also too kind with the fake blood.

Most of the guys gravitated to the “zombie triplets” – three young blond women in black tights. The triplets were much more willing to spray blood when asked stupid questions. Like this actual one: “So, uh, what’s it like being a zombie?” How pathetic that young men today can’t deftly flirt even with dead women.

But the triplets also fulfilled a stereotype with their vacuous answers…

Q. What do you look for in a boyfriend?A.He was to have a hot-looking brain. And be tall.

Still, even that was bearable. But we had a problem…

5. Zombies eat brains and drink everything.

After an hour of interviewing, the college reporters had 30 minutes to email their best questions and answers to our judges – professional journalists around the country, some who were attending their own Halloween parties.

An hour later, we had our three winners: Jyllian Roach from the University of New Mexico, Brandy Nicholson from Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee, and Rennie Patterson from Mount Mary University – an all-girl Catholic school in Milwaukee.

But it wasn’t easy awarding them their prize of zombie makeup for the night. The zombies were already on their pub crawl, and they never made it to the nearby bar where they said they’d be.

Instead, they were far away in a not-exactly-safe section of New Orleans. When we found them, they stumbled outside and quickly made up our winners. But zombies get sloppy when they’re drunk, and Brandy and Rennie ended up looking like clowns.

I’ll figure out how to make it up to them for the bad makeup, but at least they enjoyed themselves. When we asked them how it went, they all used the word “fun”…

Rennie: “It was a lot of fun because I was able to step out of my comfort zone – and the zombies helped a lot with the interviewing process by removing any stage fright I may have felt in the past.”

Brandy: “The zombies didn’t actually help me with interviewing, although it was fun! It was more than a nice distraction, I would say. It was metaphoric of exercising my journalistic muscles.”

Jyllian: “Zombie Stories was a lot of fun. It was a good exercise in asking the right questions and in drawing out good answers from difficult sources – some of those zombies just didn’t want to talk. Trying to find the best quotes and getting them submitted by the end of the 30-minute deadline was fun as well.”

6. College students are smarter than zombies.

Some of the questions and answers were quite clever, as you can see from Rennie’s video above. I won’t reveal more than I have here, because despite our problems, we’re doing this again.

Except not in New Orleans. No way.

We want to come to you. We’re applying for grants that’ll get you all the T-shirts you’ll need, plus some cash for makeup. We’re looking for schools with both journalism and theater departments.

Brandy’s description of a distraction and an exercise of journalistic muscles fits my perspective too. I felt frustrated without knowing the “assignment,” and I hoped we journalists would be briefed on the story. The zombies all had different back stories so determining a “good” question felt very subjective. My suggestions would be to make an event – like a lab blew up and the journalists have to go out to report or investigate. I also think that extending the reporting deadline (so we’d have closer to an hour to write it up) and requiring a “breaking news” post of 200 words would be better than just submitting questions and answers. Weaving the interview quotes into the story is the backbone that lets readers know a good quote from a poor one. The interview works when the quotes lend well to the story itself, providing perspective and emotion.

Ellen: If you (or anyone else) want to host Zombie Stories, I’ll handle the boring logistics so you can conceive a cornucopia of crazy concepts. More the better. Every event I’ve ever created only got better when smarter people than me decided to edit them.

The Zombies of Krewe of the Living Dead would first and foremost like to thank the SPJ for reaching out to us to collaborate on this event. In theory, this was a magnificent idea and we at K.O.L.D. had a great time and were thoroughly impressed by the student’s enthusiasm and ,sometimes, clever questions.

To address the above stated complaints:

“2. The undead are unavailable…..We discovered our zombies in (where else?) New Orleans. The Krewe of the Living Dead Social Aid and Pleasure Club is a loose collection of alcohol and latex enthusiasts who pub-crawl through the city until they’re no longer pretending to be zombies. Their shuffling, stumbling, and mumbling becomes real.”

This is actually a pretty good description of our Krewe and, in fact, I may steal this quote to better describe us in future Krewe literature…to respond to “The Undead are unavailable” line – uhhh, we have a web presence, you found us, we responded to your request. I’m not quite seeing how that makes us unavailable.

“3. Zombies aren’t punctual….”
Let’s keep in mind that the logistical problems of the event’s time and location were made very vocal by myself and fellow zombies well in advance – actually from day one of our planning stage. While it may be very easy for students to walk two blocks from their hotel to the event site, parking and fighting through the traffic of the French Quarter during the only parade of the season can prove to be quite the task*, and the fact that we had ANY zombies shamble into the area should be shown a little more gratitude.

*(to put into perspective: We from New Orleans usually try to avoid dealing with parade routes like the plague. Hence, the reason we planned our pub crawl heading away from the parade area. Had we planned the event, say at 8:30, after the parade had passed there would have been less issue with punctuality, and by all means, a larger zombie horde.)

“4. Zombies are way too nice.”
I can’t speak to all zombies in attendance concerning this issue. A lot of the questions were quite good, and considering the lack of theme besides ” interviewing zombies,” we and the students worked with what we had. I concur with Ellen above in her stating a little more of a cohesive backstory would have definitely helped both interviewer/interviewee in forming more impressive questions/answers.

…but let’s get to the heart (and dissect it) of what you covered in #4 in your list of complaints:

“Turns out, Cuillier was a better interviewee than any of the “real” zombies…”

Naturally, he’s the national president of a journalism society. This is no-brainer.

“We didn’t expect the zombies to be effusive or articulate, but the ones who were still sober at 7 p.m. should’ve at least been as creative in their retorts as they were with their outfits….”
Guilty. I was barely sober at 7:00. I really didn’t put any time in my outfit. There were just as many ridiculous questions asked as clever ones, and by the, say, 20th zombie-sex related question, I was putting as much effort into the outing as the students were. I feel this would have been rectified had there been more effort put into the concept stage, and I hold ourselves and SPJ to blame for not hashing out this idea a little further. Again I agree with Ellen above.

“But the triplets also fulfilled a stereotype with their vacuous answers…”
In their defense, they were like 15-16 years old. I really hope the guys weren’t flirting to much, as one of their father’s was present. They did have a great time and this event probably made a significant impact on them concerning their educational path, hopefully, anyway. I really hope they don’t find this blog where you fall just shy of calling them stupid blondes.

And in response to your 5th complaint….There was never any set time or location for where we were to apply the make-up, as to the fluid nature of a pub-crawl. All we knew is that when you had your winners we would receive a text/call. When we were notified, we gave you our location. As to where the quality of the make-up is concerned, I guess it’s one of those “you had to be there…” moments. You know, doing make-up outside, in a crowd of thousands, against a building sitting on the side-walk while crowds of people are moving in between you. I think all parties wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

“Instead, they were far away in a not-exactly-safe section of New Orleans…”

“Far away” is a stretch. Frenchmen St. is, in fact, 1.1 miles from the Marriot –

-and in is in no way, shape, or form a ” …not-exactly-safe section,” at anytime, much less when there is a couple thousand people on it.

“When we found them, they stumbled outside…”
Who found us? It was only the winners and one of your reps who arrived. We were standing in the street, on the phone with an SPJ minion, talking them to our location. No one stumbled out of any bar or party. Seeing the varied age of your participants, we couldn’t exactly plan to do the make-up indoors in the French Quarter at 10:00 pm.

From the quotes you used from the winners they did all agree on one thing. They had “FUN.” So did we. I don’t see what the need was for you to use our group as a scapegoat for ALL the shortcomings of this event. There was mistakes made in all stages in the planning of this event by BOTH organizing parties. Instead of sending an email stating complaints and how we could learn and make “Zombie Stories” the epic event we spoke about, you’ve decided on an age-old journalist tactic, a public smear campaign* to absolve the SPJ of all fault in the matter. *(not that I’m concerned with the measly number of hits you get on this blog.)

You are an awful person. Please stay always from the Crescent City as you lack the ability to have fun. Also, please stop teaching journalism, you are terrible at it and lack any fundamental skill needed to engage in writing beyond the scope of a suicide note. Also, ad hominem attacks are fallacious arguments. Calling people fat? Really? You should probably seek counseling as soon as possible for your obvious dissociative disorder.

Out of all the awesome things going on in New Orleans during the 2 week long celebration that is Halloween, these people donated their precious time to you, and you repay them with a shitty article badmouthing them. You sir can go fuck yourself.

Those people in the not so safe part of New Orleans aka Frenchmen Street happens to be one of the busiest safest places in New Orleans, especially during Halloween. Those people were out having fun instead of going to help you lame assholes out.

While I’m not a member of KOLD, I have been to one of their events. It was hugely successful, well-planned with around 100 or so zombies showing up. I was considering coming out for this event, but had a conflict. Given your weirdly personal attacks on those who did show up (vacuous? corpulent? why dress it up in SAT vocabulary and just call them fat and stupid?), placing the blame on one of at least three parties that might be at fault, your vague handle on the issues surrounding New Orleans like parade schedules (do you really think it was KOLD that selected the time and place of the event?) and generally poor understanding of New Orleans in general (the Marigny is dangerous?!), can’t say I made the wrong decision. Perhaps if SPJ repeats the event in New Orleans next year and the kinks are worked out, I might show up.

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